This blog is written by a journalist based in Mumbai who writes about cities, the environment, developmental issues, the media, women and many other subjects.The title 'ulti khopdi' is a Hindi phrase referring to someone who likes to look at things from the other side.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

There's no doubt that this high-society crime merits the attention of journalists ‒ but not by disregarding other stories.

Photo Credit: Facebook

“The nation” has come to a standstill. It only wants to know one thing: Who killed Sheena Bora?

The
developments since August 25, when the Mumbai police claimed they had
solved a sensational murder case, would make any media watcher feel
dizzy. Like a crime thriller that unfolds in deliberately calibrated
detail, the Sheena Bora murder case has unraveled, holding the media and
through it “the nation” in thrall. Apparently.

Who cares if the
Patidars of Gujarat are screaming murder, drawing comparisons to
Jallianwala Bagh in the way the police attacked participants at their
massive demonstrations across Gujarat to demand reservations. Or that
representatives of the Indian army continue to protest and demand One
Rank One Pension, one of many promises that the prime minister has
failed to keep. Or that apparently another Pakistani has been caught
sneaking across the border. Or that the Chinese have successfully shaken
up the Indian stock market. All this separately or together counts for
little when we have a story of a gory murder committed three years ago
that neither we nor the Mumbai police knew anything about until now.

And
what exactly have the police found? There is no body, only remnants of
a burnt corpse found three years ago. Some samples, we are told, were
sent to the forensic laboratory in Mumbai. Then we heard that these
samples had been misplaced. Now we hear they have been found and some
more discovered at the same spot. And these have now been sent for DNA
testing, a process that takes some time. Until this is done, no one, not
even the Mumbai police, knows for sure whether these body parts belong
to the missing woman Sheena Bora.

Apart from this the police case
has been built on the confession of a man who says he was the driver of
the main accused, Indrani Mukherjea. The confession, on the police’s
own admission, was extracted through extreme pressure. We can only
imagine what that could be. And we also know that such confessions can
be retracted.

A good story

Of course,
such minor details are immaterial when there is such a good story to
report. Or to distract the media from generous amounts of speculation
and conjecture. Or the all-too-familiar character assassination
considered appropriate, one presumes, as we are discussing murder.

So
we are informed, thanks to the endless debates on television, that the
main accused is a heartless mother, a “social climber” from a “small
town” (people in Guwahati ought to be really offended at this). Arnab
Goswami informed us that Indrani is “a crazy and evil genius” and
“maverick murderer” but not a “psychopath”. An employee from NewsX, the
channel that was set up by Indrani and her husband Peter Mukherjea, was
quoted in the Times of India saying that there was something
diabolical about Indrani Mukherjea's eyes. And actor Rishi Kapoor
tweeted that Indrani Mukherjea is “a real weirdo”.

NDTV has
boasted that it is against tabloidisation of the news. But in this
instance, it has done precisely that. In a programme titled “The Indrani
Files”, Barkha Dutt asked: “Do we have to reserve judgment? How deep
are we going into the lurid details of this saga?” But then, she
proceeded to do precisely that. The others on her panel liberally
dissected Indrani Mukherjea’s character and refused to even consider
that she has not yet been proven guilty. Barkha Dutt asks one of her
panelists, Anil Dharkar: “Is this a murder that the media must
investigate?” He replied: “This is a murder that the police must
investigate.”

Yet as in the past, the media is all set to
investigate this case, and thereby help the Mumbai police crack a case
that it claims it has already solved. So India Today TV went into
Indrani Mukherjea’s former husband Sanjeev Khanna’s Facebook page and
tried to read all kinds of meaning into his posts on the days before and
after the alleged murder. Khanna has reportedly confessed to abetting
in the alleged murder.

Ridiculous questions

The
media are interviewing everyone from the grandfather to Sheena Bora’s
friends to Peter Mukherjea to Bora’s brother Mikhail. Arnab Goswami
asked Peter Mukherjea, “You believe your wife is the murderer?”
“Certainly not," replies Peter. What did he expect the man to answer?

Even
Karan Thapar, otherwise considered one of the more balanced anchors,
cannot resist the running strip under his programme “To The Point” on
India Today TV that says it all: “Femme Fatale Indrani’s many truths.”

This, of course, is only a small part of a story where there is romance, deceit, cover-ups and a hundred unanswered questions.

Should
the media pay so much attention to this one case? One cannot argue
that it should not because it has everything that people like to read.
Crime is popular reading; note the growing number of pages devoted to
crime in most newspapers. A high-society murder case like this is
automatically page one material. The murder of a dalit girl in the
backwaters of Maharashtra is not.

But what about
proportionality? Is that something worth discussing? How much space
and attention should you give to one story at the cost of others?
Indian TV has never been the best example of either balance or
proportion. And here you have another example.

Given this, it is
amusing to watch media persons on TV channels trying hard to justify the
over-the-top coverage of this story as a “duty” of the media to keep
pressure that the case is solved. Really? By repeating what is already
being revealed by family members or leaked by the police, by sweating
over conjectures, is the media really helping to solve this case? Some
commentators have even drawn comparisons between this case and the
Jessica Lal case to justify media hyper activism.

Playing softball

Instead,
is it not our job as journalists to ask the police some difficult
questions? Why is Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria not asked to
explain why he has gone public with a case when even the DNA analysis on
the suspected remnants of Sheena Bora’s body has not yet been done?
What was the hurry? In any other country, would a police team rush to
the media before it had a watertight case, particularly when the people
involved are well-heeled and can employ smart defence lawyers? Instead
of asking questions, the media is devouring every morsel that is thrown
out by the police or anyone willing to speak about the case.

There
have been innumerable discussions about trial by media. Each time
something like this happens – Arushi, Sunanda Tharoor, others – there is
a little bit of contemplation, and then business as usual. Norms or
the ethics of reporting on crime have never been seriously addressed.

The
media’s obsession with sensation, with news that sells, with whatever
feeds the bottom line, has ultimately won over any notion of proportion
or balance.

1 comment:

We are sorry for the modern day media and electronic channel. They have 3 week bogus news for Lalit Gate and now Indrani related murder mystery. Let the police decode it. There can be many positive news than religious agenda, bogus Lalitgate and murder mystery.

My profile

Journalist, columnist, writer based in Mumbai. Author of "Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum" (Penguin, 2000). Worked with The Hindu, Times of India, Indian Express and Himmat Weekly.
Other books include "Whose News? The Media and Women's Issues" edited with Ammu Joseph (published by Sage 1994/2006), "Terror Counter-Terror: Women Speak Out" edited with Ammu Joesph (published by Kali for Women, 2003) and "Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters" (published by Zubaan, 2010).
Regular columns in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine and on The Hoot (www.thehoot.org).